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A Much Needed Mommy Field Trip

Posted on May 12, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

Yes, it is true. This mommy took herself, and a friend on a field trip the day before Mother’s Day. Some may call it selfish; others call it a must needed adventure. I call it being a GEM and knowing that I need ME time. Thanks to Rene Syler, I have realized that it is fine for me to need time away from my family. I love the boys, but this mama likes time with friends and having some additional estrogen in her life.

The reality is that a lot has changed since we got back from Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. At the time, I knew there were big changes coming, but never could have imagined the way it would play out. We started to look at different schooling options for our son. After a major bullying incident, we had to look into this faster than we had intended. I am no longer associated with the local magazine for a variety of reasons. What I realized during all of this chaos is that I love my family/friends and their place in my life. I also saw how people stepped up, helped me with things, and allowed me to laugh during a highly stressful time. Most important of all, I saw the power of women coming together. Reinventing myself is happening with each breath that I take.

Since we got back from Disney, I have been communicating with Rene Syler. Rene has been awesome cheering me on in the background as I embrace my inner GEM (Good Enough Mother). Her energy is contagious. At one point, Rene and I realized that we do not live too that far from one another. The Head GEM suggested that we meet for lunch one day. Before I knew it, Rene and I set a date for a Mommy Field Trip for the two of us and Christina from Cutest Kid Ever.

This past Saturday, yes the day before Mother’s Day, we met at a restaurant. After lots of hugs, we sat down, ordered some drinks/food, and talked up a storm. We had a lot to chat about. Business, families, education, social media, fun, Disney, and pretty much anything else you can think of was on our agenda. Being bloggers, we all took turns taking photos of our food and other items:

Of course, being the social media groupies that we are, we also sent out some Tweets from the Mommy Field Trip. Here is the TwitPic that I captured of the beautiful Rene:

Before we finished our meal, we asked someone in the restaurant to take a photo of us. We hoped to get one outside along the Hudson River, but needed one from inside. Here is a view from our Mommy Field Trip:

Before we knew it, the time had come to head out to our cars. Lots of hugs, some photos by the river, and promises to do this again. It was an amazing first ever Mommy Field Trip for me thanks to the women I was with. Thank you Rene for being an inspiration. I know that Christina and I will use your words of wisdom in the not too distant future. Thanks to you, I move forward one step at a time toward my GEM reinvention. Thank you for supporting me and my new projects that are yet to be seen.

Have you been on a Mommy Field Trip recently? If not, what are you waiting for?!

Categories:
decisions DisneySMMoms food glorious food friends fun interesting laughs looking back me moments photos road trip weekend

NY State license plates

Posted on August 6, 2010 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

Growing up, one of the things that I liked about road trips was seeing license plates from different places. Driving from upstate NY to North Carolina and other parts of the south along the Atlantic Coast allowed us to see many items. Of course, I still remember the gorgeous license plates from our trip to Hawaii in 1988.

I think I took license plates for granted until recently. I knew they changed in New York from time to time, but never thought much more of it. Enter being an adult and realizing that the change in plates being an increase in registration fees and everything else that the state slaps on. Hello instant revenue in one easy step. For those of us in New York, we are experiencing this right now. Our very generous governor (on his way out – might I add) decided to alter the plates. Nobody knows why since they were not an improved look, we all speculate it was a nice money maker for New York which is in a lot of trouble.

So why am I complaining? It is not just because of the cost. It’s because of the look of the plates. The new plates are U-G-L-Y! Not being a fan of orange to begin with, they are bold, hard to read from a distance when driving, and have nothing to do with our state. If you are not familiar with the New York State license plates, here is a view of them from my life:

My feeling is that this should have been canned and redone to make it better. This was rushed and uncalled for at this point in time. Luckily, mine will not be switched out for quite some time.

My question to you this week:

What state are you from and do you like you license plates? Also curious if yours have changed a lot during your lifetime or stayed mostly the same.

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Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #111

Categories:
Aloha Friday looking back me moments road trip

NYC and BlogHer bound

Posted on July 30, 2010 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

A week from today, I will be in NYC at BlogHer. I am excited, nervous and overwelmed in a good way. There are so many people that I can not wait to meet, sessions that look incredible and fun parties that will add to the experience. Last year, I was one of the people that was not at BlogHer ’09 in Chicago. I had planned on it, but opted for a family Disney World vacation earlier instead. I remember sitting at my computer wishing I was there with everyone in Chicago. I saw all of the pre-BlogHer posts and drooled, then sulked when everyone was there and live blogging/Tweeting.

I vowed not to over write about BlogHer before the conference. Since this will be my first BlogHer experience, I am going in naive with the expectation to take it one moment at a time. Sure, I have a tentative schedule of everything I would love to do. Will I be upset if it doesn’t work out? Not really, there is so much that I will learn from BlogHer and I am thrilled to be able to go.

So my question to you this week:

Have you ever been to BlogHer in the past and will you be there next week? If not, please know I feel for you and hope that one day you will be able to attend if that is your wish.

P.S. One last thing before I go. I would like to take the time to thank Chevrolet. I am part of a group that will be carpooling to BlogHer in NYC in a Chevy sponsored vehicle. CutestKidEver, AlbanyMommy, TechyDad and I will be driving in a Tahoe Hybrid to our destination.

We are one of ten groups that were selected. They will be providing us with the vehicle, one tank of gas, ON STAR access, and parking once we arrive. They are not paying for additional gas, lodging or our tickets to BlogHer. If you would like to follow along with our journey and the others carpooling to BlogHer ’10, you can follow #ChevyBlogHer on Twitter.

Update: For those taking part in the #ChevyBlogHer carpool and want to use the banner, Lisa asked me to share. Here is the code to use:

<p><a href="http://www.blogher.com/carpool-blogher-10-chevrolet" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.theangelforever.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ChevyBlogHer.jpg"></a></p>

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Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #110

Categories:
Aloha Friday Blogging Conference bloggy friends BlogHer me moments road trip TechyDad

A cherry picking family record

Posted on July 12, 2010 8:51 pm by TheAngelForever

If you have never been cherry picking, I urge you to go. Even if you are not a fan of cherries, the experience is well worth it. Two years ago, we went cherry picking with my brother and his family. When we tried to go last year, it did not work out. The crop was late and we were out of luck. This year, we watched carefully and planned the weekend to go.

Two years ago, we had four adults, an almost five year old, just one year old and 10 month old with us. This time we had six adults (Nana and Papa joined us), an almost seven year old, just three year old, almost three year old and four and a half month old. Having two extra adults was a blessing. This year, we went to a new pick your own cherry location called Singer Farms. Our first impression was not the best thanks to too many people swarming and too little parking. After we got over trying to find a spot in weeds that were taller than our little car, we got situated. JSL was sleeping after the pre-cherry picking fiasco and so was the baby. Everyone else went over to get buckets to collect cherries.

When we got to the orchard, it was amazing. The trees were overloaded with tons of cherries. For as far as the eye could see, there were trees filled with different types of cherries. We stuck with the sweet cherries. As we were getting settled, JSL woke up and joined the picking crew. Nana helped the little kids some, but was also in charge of pushing sleeping BA around in his stroller.

The cherries were absolutely amazing. Each time we were ready to stop, more sucked us in. It was like ADD of the cherry kind "Oh look . . . pretty cherry!" Finally, after just under an hour, we decided that we had more than enough to feed all of us and many others. We carried our precious cargo back to get weighed so we could pay for them.

We mainly picked two kinds of sweet cherries. One was similar to a bing (or may have been) and the other looked like a rainer cherry. Those were definitely a fan favorite. They have a yellow hue to them and when you bite inside the flesh is light colored. The interesting part, they taste like a peach – without the annoying fuzz outside.

If you read my Tweets from our adventure, you know how many pounds we had. If not, what do you think?

I will end the suspense. We picked 33 pounds of cherry goodness. That beat our record of just over 22 pounds! We ate a lot of them Saturday throughout the day and Sunday morning. Then, we divided them up. We took about half of them home to share with others. Tonight, when the kids are in bed, there is a bowl of cherries with my name on it!

Thank you to Uncle I, Aunt M, Nana, Papa, SG and my boys for a wonderful experience with my extended family.

Categories:
cousins family food glorious food fun interesting jl jsl nhl photos road trip summer weekend yummy

Cousins, museum, cherries, pirates and more

Posted on July 11, 2010 11:11 pm by TheAngelForever

This weekend, I was a little busy. Thursday night, we went to visit my brother and his family out in western NY. We arrived rather late that night and my niece SG was sleeping. Thanks to this, the kids saw her at breakfast the next morning. Here, they bonded over cereal while we planned what to do on the rainy day since cherry picking was out.

We eventually made our way to the Buffalo Museum of Science. They had a new dinosaur exhibit that we thought the kids would love. Here is a preview of our time there:

When we got home, it was time for Uncle I to go to work for a little while. The kids played and even baby BA enjoyed tummy time fun with a little help from the bigger kids.

Saturday morning, Nana and Papa came to join us. As we started our journey to the cherry picking place, we had to stop and go back home. JSL decided to add some fun and excitement to the day. He was drinking water, started to gag – and well let’s just say he needed a change of clothing. We made our way to the cherry orchard and all you could see were trees chock full of cherries of all kinds. They were gorgeous. Before we knew it, we had picked a LOT of cherries. More about that coming soon. Here are a few photos of the cherry picking group and our delicious finds.

After this, we wandered at a Pirate Festival by Lake Ontario.

The views were gorgeous and the kids even enjoyed looking at the water below.

Once we had lunch, we wandered back to the house. The kids played outside for a while, we all had dinner and then it was time for bed. Sunday, we stayed until after lunch and then it was time to head home. It really was sad to say goodbye to Uncle I, Aunt M, SG and BA. We had a wonderful weekend with my brother and his family. The kids had so much fun together we can not wait to see them again.